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Of all the races, there is no better stage for heroism than a marathon.

George A. Sheehan

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George A. Sheehan
Age: 74 †
Born: 1918
Born: November 5
Died: 1993
Died: November 1
Cardiologist
Military Officer
Physician
Marathon
Races
Heroism
Stage
Race
Better

More quotes by George A. Sheehan

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Sweat cleanses from the inside. It comes from places a shower will never reach.
George A. Sheehan
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We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.
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There are as many reasons for running as there are days in the year, years in my life. But mostly I run because I am an animal and a child, an artist and a saint. So, too, are you. Find your own play, your own self-renewing compulsion, and you will become the person you are meant to be.
George A. Sheehan
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Running is just such a monastery- a retreat, a place to commune with God and yourself, a place for psychological and spiritual renewal.
George A. Sheehan
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The music of a marathon is a powerful strain, one of those tunes of glory. It asks us to forsake pleasures, to discipline the body, to find courage, to renew faith and to become one's own person, utterly and completely.
George A. Sheehan
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No matter how old I get, the race remains one of life's most rewarding experiences. My times become slower and slower, but the experience of the race is unchanged: each race a drama, each race a challenge, each race stretching me in one way or another, and each race telling me more about myself and others.
George A. Sheehan
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And while these pounds were being shed, while the physiological miracles were occurring with the heart and muscle and metabolism, psychological marvels were taking place as well. Just so, the world over, bodies, minds, and souls are constantly being born again, during miles on the road.
George A. Sheehan
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Some think guts is sprinting at the end of a race. But guts is what got you there to begin with. Guts start back in the hills with 6 miles to go and you're thinking of how you can get out of this race without anyone noticing. Guts begin when you still have forty minutes of torture left and you're already hurting more than you ever remember.
George A. Sheehan
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Life is a positive-sum game. Everyone from the gold medallist to the last finisher can rejoice in a personal victory.
George A. Sheehan
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The more I run, the more I want to run, and the more I live a life conditioned and influenced and fashioned by my running. And the more I run, the more certain I am that I am heading for my real goal: to become the person I am.
George A. Sheehan
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If marathoners finish they win.
George A. Sheehan
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The distance runner is mysteriously reconciling the separations of body and mind, of pain and pleasure, of the conscious and the unconscious. He is repairing the rent, and healing the wound in his divided self. He has found a way to make the ordinary extraordinary the commonplace unique the everyday eternal.
George A. Sheehan
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Running makes you an athlete in all areas of life...trained in the basics, prepared for whatever comes, ready to fill each hour and deal with the decisive moment.
George A. Sheehan
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To know you are one with what you are doing, to know that you are a complete athlete, begins with believing you are a runner.
George A. Sheehan
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People begin running for any number of motives, but we stick to it for one basic reason-to find out who we really are.
George A. Sheehan
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Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.
George A. Sheehan
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Success rests with having the courage and endurance and, above all, the will to become the person you are, however peculiar that may be. Then you will be able to say, I found my hero and he is me.
George A. Sheehan
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The desire to run comes from deep within us — from the unconscious, the intuitive, the instinctive. And that desire becomes a passion when the runner learns to race. Then, the race becomes all — the lovemaking of the runner.
George A. Sheehan
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Once you have decided that winning isn't everything, you become a winner.
George A. Sheehan
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Why race? The need to be tested, perhaps the need to take risks and the chance to be number one.
George A. Sheehan